Expenses cheat David Chaytor jailed for 18 months

Shamed Labour MP David Chaytor was today jailed for 18 months as he became the first politician to be convicted and sentenced over the expenses scandal that rocked Westminster.

The former Bury North MP, who admitted trying to cheat the taxpayer out of more than £22,000, looked stunned as the sentence was passed and seemed bewildered as he was led away by a warder.

He was expelled from the Labour Party immediately after the verdict and will be taken to Wandsworth jail before serving his sentence in an open prison.

Mr Justice Saunders told Southwark crown court the expenses scandal had "shaken public confidence in our legislature and has angered the public".

He went on: "Chaytor only bears a small yet important part of the responsibility but he has accepted that his conduct was dishonest.

"When these offences are discovered it is necessary that serious penalties should follow so that everybody knows how important it is for people — including those who hold important public positions — to be honest in their dealings with public funds. That is the only way in which the public's faith in the system can be restored and maintained."

Grey-haired Chaytor, 61, had submitted bogus invoices to support claims totalling £22,650 for IT services and renting homes in London and his Bury North constituency. But the properties were owned by him and his mother, and he did not pay out any of his own money, the court was told.

The judge said he had reduced the sentence from two years to reflect the ex-MP's guilty plea to the three counts of false accounting.

Chaytor entered his plea last month after he failed to claim parliamentary immunity. He had even claimed that he would not get a fair trial. He could be released by autumn.

Labour MP John Mann said: "The jailing of David Chaytor is an inevitable and necessary outcome of the Parliamentary expenses scandal. MPs cannot be above the law, nor should MPs ever be able to determine their own pay and expenses."

Over nearly three years Chaytor claimed he was paying rent on a London flat he owned and a terrace cottage near Bury where his late mother had lived before suffering dementia and being moved to a care home.

He also submitted bogus invoices for consultancy fees he had allegedly paid for IT services to a man who had not even asked for money.

In all he falsely claimed £22,650 and received £18,350. The court heard that Chaytor owned a portfolio of five properties in London, Yorkshire and Lancashire. When his scams were finally exposed in the press, leading to a police investigation, he called them "an unforgivable error in the accounting procedure".

Chaytor has paid back more than £19,000 — which is more than he stole, the court heard. Now he must also repay part of the cost of bringing him to court on top of defence legal costs estimated at £50,000. Jim Sturman, QC, defending, said the ex-MP had shown "deep and genuine remorse".

He added: "His guilty plea is the only way he can seek to put matters right and to apologise to all those he has let down: his fellow Parliamentarians, the public, his family and of course himself. He has paid a devastating price already, not just financially.

"He has even paid back more than the Crown sought and is likely to have to pay the costs. He has lost his job and is currently unemployable."

Mr Sturman described him as a conscientious and hard-working MP, adding: "He is a good man laid low by his own dishonesty and stupidity.

"Chaytor is a broken man. There is nothing of a spark left in him except when he talks about his grandchild."